SHAKESPEARE CLUB

Evening Star, Issue 19546, 3 May 1927, Page 3

SHAKESPEARE CLUB

To-morrow even nig, at His Majesty’s Theatre, the Dunedin Shakespeare Club will present as the second reading of its fiftieth _ year ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona.’ Although frequently read by branches of the British Empire Shakespeare Society in Great Britain this play has nob previously been read by the local club, and the occasion should therefore be one of special interest. The play is one of the earliest of the dramatist’s works. “It breathes the spirit of eager, thoughtless, irresponsible youth,” and while not among the greatest or most famous plays has many points of interest. If it shows comparatively little of tho poet’s supreme gift of insight into human nature the progress of tho action is delightfully easy and natural, though critics will probably regard one incident in tho last act as inconceivable. Students will note with interest scenes, incidents, images, and situations which, always extended, developed, and refined, are met with in later works. Tho play is not so “full of quotations” as some of the more famous ones, but among others “a woman’s reason” and tho proverb, “ a virtue of necessity,” will be recognised, and everybody knows the lyric, 1 Who is Sylvia?’ The singing of this last by the chorus. Miss F. Sumner, as also the solos by Mr A. Langley during tho interval will add much to the pleasure of the evening’s ■entertainment.